‘Reminders of Him’ Review: Finally, a Colleen Hoover Adaptation with Some Actual Heart

3 weeks ago 14

I’ve been doing the work. As Colleen Hoover‘s books have suddenly become fast fodder for all manner of big screen adaptations — the legally fraught one about domestic violence, the soapy one about marital infidelity and first love, the upcoming one in which Anne Hathaway might be a lunatic — I’ve endeavored to keep an open mind about material that didn’t appeal to me on the page and mostly doesn’t appeal to me on the screen. Hoover has written over two dozen beloved books, surely there is something here for anyone and everyone. Even for me?

So, I’ve tried. It’s the least you can ask of any critic of any artform. Try to engage. Attempt to see the merits, the intent, the thinking. Meet it on its own terms. Don’t scoff. And while, three completed films in, I cannot say that Colleen Hoover is for me (a “CoHort,” I am not), I am beginning to see glimmers of a different side of her stories. I like romance. I’m not afraid of melodrama. A big twist? Throw it at me. Get some tears going? I do love that.

THE KILLER, (aka DIE XUE SHUANG XIONG), Chow Yun-Fat, Danny Lee, 1989

Which is all a long way of saying that, while not a slam-dunk, Vanessa Caswill’s “Reminders of Him” is easily the best Hoover film adaptation yet, bolstered by strong performances and an emotional center that does not primarily rely on some kind of tortured romance (though, that’s there, too!). If these are the other dimensions on offer in Hoover’s books, perhaps there is life in those pages.

Ignore the oddly peppy start to the film, as Kenna Rowan (the always-appealing Maika Monroe, breaking out of her usual scream queen roles) cruises back into a small American West town (to say it’s jarring when the cute little village is revealed to be Laramie, Wyoming is an understatement), freshly sprung from jail after serving a sentence for, well, we’ll find out soon enough. The upbeat nature of this introduction’s tone hides some dark, dark stuff, but Caswill maintains its verve, even as Kenna … removes a roadside memorial cross? Huh.

But Kenna has a reason for doing this light desecration, as she soon notes in her voiceover narration, which weaves throughout the film. She is not talking to the audience, however, but to her dead boyfriend Scotty (Rudy Pankow, who we meet in flashbacks). Kenna doesn’t have much to her name, and her most prized possession is a thick stack of notebooks she writes in whenever she gets a moment. As someone who is clearly a lonely pariah with few friends and zero family, this is often. The notebooks? They are letters to Scotty, and they serve to both guide us through Kenna’s story and to help her make sense of the tragedy it’s become.

Awkward flashbacks to her time in jail attempt to further contextualize her fraught emotional state, though they’re really not necessary (book readers will find plenty cut out of Hoover’s original text when it comes to Kenna’s prison time, most of which sounds like it threatened to make her a much less likable character).Changes have also been made to the accident itself — again, smart ones that help Kenna’s case, both with the audience and the people she meets back home.

Soon, Kenna has moved into a shitty apartment complex (ironically called Paradise), found a job at a local market, and even made some friends (including young Monika Myers as both neighbor and coworker, and country music star Lainey Wilson, not playing herself in the film). She’s also run into one of the trio of people she least wants to see: Ledger (Tyriq Withers), Scotty’s lifelong BFF who never met Kenna during the pair’s romance (he was in the NFL, OK!?). Ledger owns a local bar that used to be a local bookstore that Scotty and Kenna loved, and when the pretty, shy blond strolls in, of course he takes a shine to her.

And then he realizes who she is. This is as good a time as any to introduce the two other people Kenna is most afraid of: Patrick (Bradley Whitford) and Grace (Lauren Graham) Landry, Scotty’s parents. You see what’s happening here, right? Kenna was in prison because she killed Scotty during a horrible car accident that was really no one’s fault, and she’s back in Pretend-It’s-Not-Actually-Laramie (the film was shot in Canada, and it does look beautiful) to try to prove to the Landrys she’s not a total monster. Because, you see, she was pregnant when she went to jail, and Patrick and Grace have been raising her daughter Diem (Zoe Kosovic) ever since.

And you know who else has also been helping raise Diem? Ledger. Aw, nuts.

Listen, this might all sound very melodramatic and soap opera-y and silly, but Caswill and her stars do solid work finding the genuine emotion here. Kenna is in an unthinkable, seemingly insurmountable position. Ledger, too, especially as romantic notions start to grow between the two (while I might have scribbled, “What??” in my notebook upon their first kiss, Monroe and Withers do eventually turn in a sweet romance).

Inevitably, this will all come to a head, especially as a lovestruck Ledger attempts to weave Kenna into his life and Diem grows ever-more curious about her mom. We know that. Hoover never shies away from a big blowup or blowout, and while “Reminders of Him” offers exactly that in the form of a spectacularly badly timed visit from Patrick to Ledger’s NFL-financed mansion (??), it’s what happens after that makes the film feel like a (for now) outlier in the Hoover Adaptation Cycle. It’s smaller, quieter, and it feels true. Not soapy, not silly, not like something ripped out of an airport book buy. That’s the first step.